Summary of Proposed Updates for UDL Guidelines 3.0

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Introduction

The UDL Guidelines are a living, dynamic tool that is continuously developed based on new research and feedback from practitioners. Since the release of “Version 1.0” in 2008, CAST has released three other versions reflecting different structural and content changes. In 2020, CAST launched our most recent effort to update the UDL Guidelines. This update focuses specifically on updating the Guidelines through an equity lens. While the Guidelines have become a valuable tool to help practitioners design for learner variability, we recognize that gaps and biases exist. There has been a strong call from the field—both practitioners and researchers alike—to more fully develop the Guidelines to address critical barriers rooted in biases and systems of oppression. The current update aims to respond to this call and to work toward fulfilling the promise of the Guidelines as a tool to guide the design of learning environments that more fully honor and value every learner.

Since our launch in 2020, we have been committed to a community-driven, inclusive, and transparent updating process. CAST recognizes that we should not and cannot engage in this updating process alone. We have created a balanced approach that prioritizes and centers learning from practitioners' and other community members' feedback as well as reviewing the literature. As part of this process, we have:

Established an Advisory Board, a UDL Guidelines Collaborative, and a Young Adult Advisory Board to guide our work
Conducted more than 40 focus groups (180 participants including teachers, instructional coaches, professional development leaders, faculty members, researchers, etc.) to learn from their perspectives, lived experiences, and feedback
Reviewed the research on the UDL Guidelines research pages to understand the balance of different research fields, methodological approaches, epistemological approaches, and author positionalities
Conducted literature reviews of equity-oriented research that connect to and extend the Guidelines, such as disability studies and critical pedagogy studies

We have been analyzing the feedback and ideas collected to inform the updating process. This document offers a summary of the proposed updates along with the “why” behind the updates. We share representative quotes to center practitioners’ and other community members’ perspectives as well as examples of research that inspired the changes.

We are excited to share this summary of proposed updates with you, and we are eager for your feedback. Please share your reactions via this brief survey.

Overarching Themes

Expand the UDL Guidelines to more fully:

Emphasize identity as part of variability, including the “who” along with the “why” (Multiple Means of Engagement), the “what” (Multiple Means of Representation), and the “how” (Multiple Means of Action and Expression)
Acknowledge individual, institutional, and systemic biases as barriers to learning without limits
Emphasize the value of interdependence and collective learning
Shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered language

Proposed Updates for Multiple Means of Engagement

Expand the guidelines and checkpoints for Engagement to:

Center, affirm, and sustain learners’ strengths and identities
Emphasize the role of belonging in teaching and learning
Emphasize the role of joy and play in teaching and learning

The “why” behind these updates

Participant feedback

“Sometimes we treat students as if they have to earn the learning environment...you have to come a specific way…in a very compliant, buttoned up kind of way. I wonder if the Engagement Guidelines can be broadened to allow for more than one way of being…?”
“How do we help…people realize that it’s not about me dispensing knowledge?...Where is that in the guidelines now and where could that maybe be more explicit?...Is the word co-design anywhere in the guidelines? Maybe that ought to be somewhere?”
“Our society values worth [based] on production…Joy and play is huge–should be part of the paradigm shift–it’s not just about being productive.”

Samples of inspirations from the literature

Baglieri, S. (2020). Toward inclusive education? Focusing a critical lens on universal design for learning. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(5), 42-74.

Brown, K. (2020). Nurturing Black disabled joy. In A. Wong (Ed.), Disability visibility: First-person stories from the twenty-first century (pp. 117–120). Vintage Books.

Espinoza, M. L., Vossoughi, S., Rose, M., & Poza, L. E. (2020). Matters of participation: Notes on the study of dignity and learning. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 27(4), 325–347.

Gay, R. (2022). Inciting joy. Algonquin.

Ginwright, S. A. (2022). The four pivots: Reimagining justice, reimagining ourselves. Penguin Random House.

Gutiérrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher, 32(5), 19–25.

González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2006). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Routledge.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.

Lee, C. D. (2001). Is October Brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system for underachieving students. American Educational Research Journal, 38(1), 97–141.

Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.

Nasir, N. I. S., Rosebery, A. S., Warren, B., & Lee, C. D. (2006). Learning as a cultural process: Achieving equity through diversity. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 489–504). Cambridge University Press.

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.

Waitoller, F. R., & King Thorius, K. A. (2016). Cross-pollinating culturally sustaining pedagogy and universal design for learning: Toward an inclusive pedagogy that accounts for dis/ability. Harvard Educational Review, 86(3), 366-389.

Proposed Updates for Multiple Means of Representation

Expand the guidelines and checkpoints for Representation to:

Consider the notion of “multiple means of representation” through the lens of identity
Consider perceptions of people and cultures
Value multiple ways of knowing including and extending beyond Western approaches to knowledge

The “why” behind these updates

Participant feedback

“The Guidelines don't say, 'Hey, one simple thing that you could do is make sure that the images that you are using, the videos that you choose for class--that students can see themselves represented’...I think it's too implied.”
“We all know that we need to be more explicit in the Guidelines about intersectionality…When we look at representation, we always think audio, this, that, and the other, the basics. I don’t think like that. I think about it deeper, but how do I get my colleagues to go deeper with representation?”
“I want to make sure we capture this notion of ‘multiple ways of knowing.’ Really thinking about heritage and culture in terms of what students bring to the classroom…”

Samples of inspirations from the literature

Anderson, J. (2019). Hooked on classics. Harvard Graduate School of Education. www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/19/08/hooked-classics.

Hammond, Z. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.

Minor, C. (2020). We got this: Equity, access, and the quest to be who our students need us to be. Heinemann.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. Scholastic.

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.

Style, E. (1996). Curriculum as window and mirror. Social Science Record, 33(2), 21–28.

Proposed Updates for Multiple Means of Action and Expression

Expand the guidelines and checkpoints for Action and Expression to:

Center and value forms of expression that have been historically silenced or ignored
Emphasize the role that bias plays in offering/selecting modes of expression

The “why” behind these updates

Participant feedback

“Explicitly call it out…honor student voice and students’ ways of showing understanding”
“Are we favoring one way of students demonstrating understanding over others?”
“[Emphasize that] one modality is not better than the other”
“Include probing questions that could help anticipate bias and to acknowledge our own bias as teachers, and how that could impact our teaching and the options we provide.”

Samples of inspirations from the literature

Annamma, S. A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2013). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 1-31.

Baglieri, S. (2020). Toward inclusive education? Focusing a critical lens on universal design for learning. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(5), 42-74.

Cazden, C., Cope, B., Fairclough, N., Gee, J., Kalantzis, M., Kress, G., Luke, A., Luke, C., Michaels, S., & Nakata, M. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.

Davis, N. R., Vossoughi, S., & Smith, J. F. (2020). Learning from below: A micro-ethnographic account of children's self-determination as sociopolitical and intellectual action. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 24, 100373.

Delpit, L. (2006). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. The New Press.

Gay, R. (2022). Inciting joy. Algonquin.

Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148-164.

hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

Jackson, R.G., Thorius, K.A.K., & Kyser, T.S. (2016). Systemic approaches to eliminating disproportionality in special education. Equity by Design. The Great Lakes Equity Center (GLEC).

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12.

National Center for Learning Disabilities, (2020). Significant Disproportionality in Special Education: Current Trends and Actions for Impact. Retrieved from https://ncld.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2020-NCLD-Disproportionality_Trends-and-Actions-for-Impact_FINAL-1.pdf.

Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (2009). Living narrative: Creating lives in everyday storytelling. Harvard University Press.

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.

Rosebery, A. S., Ogonowski, M., DiSchino, M., & Warren, B. (2010). “The coat traps all your body heat”: Heterogeneity as fundamental to learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(3), 322–357.

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. Random House.

Initial Findings Regarding Expert Learners

Concerns around the notion of expert learners that we are working to address in Guidelines 3.0:

The term “expert” implies ideas of exclusivity and elitism
The notion of “expert learners” ignores the importance of collectively generating knowledge
The notion of “expert learners” fails to recognize the brilliance inherent in every learner
The term "expert learners" is confusing across cultures and languages

The “why” behind these concerns

Participant feedback

“For me, expert implies the other, which is lack of expertise. It’s very hierarchical: so there are experts and people who aren’t experts.”
“I feel like it’s [the word ‘expert’] almost having people get the end result. To be competitive, like, you need to be the best. You need to get this expert thing. And it’s not that.”
“I’ve struggled with the term expert learning for quite some time…My disconnect from it is that I believe we all come to the table as experts in our own lived experiences already. And, I don’t feel like I am in the position to make you an expert on yourself.”
“We should probably vet that language of expert learner through, like, many cultural lenses to see what…those words really mean.”

Samples of inspirations from the literature

Espinoza, M. L., Vossoughi, S., Rose, M., & Poza, L. E. (2020). Matters of participation: Notes on the study of dignity and learning. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 27(4), 325–347.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.